Dolichoderus cornutus
Dolichoderus cornutus is an extinct species of Eocene ant in the genus Dolichoderus. Described by Mayr in 1868, the fossils were discovered in the Baltic amber, where a fossilised worker ant was only described, and it is presumed these ants existed at least 40 million years ago.

Vincent Perrichot · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Sits inside
- DolichoderusPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Arthropoda
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Insecta
Time the record covers
At most 3.9 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 37.71 Mya and 33.9 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
6 occurrences of Dolichoderus cornutus on record, most of them in the Eocene. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
6 occurrences- Eocene100%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Dolichoderus cornutus and its relatives
EoceneWhere Dolichoderus cornutus and its relatives were recorded in the Eocene.
Found in the same rock
2,030 taxa- Ctenobethylus goepperti6 sites
- Dolichoderus tertiarius6 sites
- Eocamponotus mengei6 sites
- Formica flori6 sites
- Lasius schiefferdeckeri6 sites
- Pachycondyla succinea6 sites
- Prenolepis henschei6 sites
- Yantaromyrmex geinitzi6 sites
- Enneamerus reticulatus5 sites
- Gesomyrmex hoernesi5 sites
- Hypoponera atavia5 sites
- Nylanderia pygmaea5 sites
- Plagiolepis klinsmanni5 sites
- Tetraponera ocellata5 sites
- Tetraponera simplex5 sites
- Trichoneura (Trichoneura) vulgaris5 sites
- Cataglyphoides constricta4 sites
- Dolichoderus balticus4 sites
- Dolichoderus sculpturatus4 sites
- Elephantomyia (Elephantomyia) longirostris4 sites
- Erotesis aequalis4 sites
- Holocentropus affinis4 sites
- Holocentropus atratus4 sites
- Holocentropus incertus4 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 6 sites for Dolichoderus cornutus, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
3 references- Die Ameisen des baltischen Bernsteins3
- Ants of the genus Dolichoderus (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) from the Baltic and Rovno ambers2
- The Ants of the Baltic Amber1
Each of the 6 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Each entry links to the Paleobiology Database's own record for the work.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Dolichoderus cornutus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Vincent Perrichot
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Dolichoderus cornutus was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itDolichoderus through timeFormations of the EoceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Mayr 1868)